GOVERNANCE

Unfortunately for residents of the northern frontier, the neat lines the 1824 Constitutional Convention traced on the map were not conducive to sound governance. The national government was weak and enmeshed in constant conflict. As a result, it could not shoulder the burden of defending Hispanics from Indian raids, and it neglected other matters, such as trade promotion. Since local governments were at least as impoverished as the national one, they could not defend the citizenry. By default, the main burden of defense fell on members of low-status groups, such as free peasants and hacienda cowboys, who assumed the burden of combat, while the more affluent subsidized its costs. After independence, troops received less pay, worse provisions, and poorer mounts, and were less effective than they had been before independence. At one time or another, troops in each frontier province were furloughed so they could support themselves by hunting, farming, or ranching.2

Distance and slow communications inevitably created a sense of isolation from the central government. That government’s failure to address defense needs heightened the sense of alienation and frustration. Resentment toward the central government mounted as politicians in a far away capital made key decisions. The income qualifications included in the 1836 constitution only added insult to injury, since it reportedly excluded every Californian from serving as a senator or deputy. In 1833, California Governor Jose Figueroa, born in what is today Morelos, noted that California’s Hispanics looked upon Mexicans with the same hostility that Mexicans had viewed Spaniards. Mexican officials treated frontier people with condescension and described them as undereducated rustics, which intensified this feeling.3

At the time of Mexican independence, many leaders on the frontier took greater pride in their region than in their nation and saw themselves as socially distinct from central Mexico. The military and the Church, the bastions of institutional strength in the north during the Spanish era, had lost much of their effectiveness. As a result, before 1845, in California and New Mexico, dissatisfaction with the central government in Mexico City grew to serious proportions.4

In 1845, Antonio Comaduran, the first justice of the peace and military commander at Tucson, reflected widespread frontier sentiment when he declared:

Our leaders pay no attention to even the most basic of their own laws. Weary of taxes and other burdens placed on them for no good reason, our people feel that the nation has lost its sovereignty and independence. To say that we are Mexicans means nothing anymore.5